Monthly Archives: April 2014

LG is sending out invites to an event on Tuesday, May 27th in London with simultaneous events scheduled in New York and San Francisco. The invitation doesn’t offer much information, simply stressing the letter ‘G.’ However, we’re told there’s a new flagship smartphone ready to drop.

The LG G2 managed to win some fans with stellar battery life and a really nice screen. The successor is rumored to bump the resolution up past the 1080p mark that has been standard for a while now.

Andrew Bell’s kickass mini Android collectibles are, well, kickass. But sometimes the job calls for a bigger Android collectible. I’m honestly not sure what job that may be, but there has to be at least one. And for that one, Andrew has answered the call – welcome the Mega Android Collectible to family. At ten inches, it’s pretty big. Comparatively, anyway. (Mind out of the gutter, guys.)

This massive Android features ball-jointed arms and a big ol’ removable head.

In a normal giveaway, we have a one, two, ten…some number of devices to give away, and that’s basically the end of it. This giveaway, however, is different. This go, we’re working with Poweramp and Negri Electronics to give away one of five handsets:

Samsung Galaxy S5

LG G2

HTC One M8

Nexus 5

Samsung Galaxy Note 3

The kicker? Four other sites are also running the contest. So, essentially, one winner from each site will get one of the above-listed handsets.

With more and more smartphones featuring water resistance as standard, particularly Samsung’s Galaxy S5, it seems like weatherproofing may be on the uptrend in the smartphone world. It’s easy to see why – countless phones are lost to moisture-related incidents, whether it be a pool, toilet, or washing machine. Building phones designed to withstand the elements only makes sense, as nearly ever-present companions in our daily lives, our phones are bound to end up exposed to some less than electronic-friendly conditions during their lifetime.

The first notable update for the new Android version of Mailbox adds a spiffy, time-saving feature: action buttons in the app’s email notifications. Users should now see a “Reply” button on the expanded Mailbox notification, as well as “Archive” and “Snooze” buttons, which are activated via swipes while in the app itself. These should help achieve the app’s stated goal of making email organization faster and easier for time-strapped mobile users.

If you’ve been patiently waiting for carrier billing to come to your cell carrier, today might be your lucky day. Customers of Starhub in Singapore and A1 in Austria should now be able to charge app and content purchases from the the Play Store directly to their cellular accounts. A1 is the first carrier in Austria to support the feature, and Starhub is the second in Singapore.

Carrier billing is often a popular option in Europe and Asia where credit and debit cards are less common.

Google is always trying new things, and one of those new things has been left where we can play with it. Yay! The LEGO redesign is an experimental sandbox for mobile search results. The overall look is a little different than the current one, but it’s the animations in the results that set it apart. Check out the video below for a demo – left tab is LEGO and right is standard.

If there’s one thing Verizon’s known for, it’s high prices. Errr, constant changes that end up costing consumers more money. No, that’s not right either. Umm…red! That’s it. If there’s one thing Verizon’s know for (aside from high prices and finding ways to charge customers more money) it’s red. You know, the color. That’s why we call it “Big Red.” Heh.

Anyway, since Verizon is oft-associated with red, it looks like the company will be getting a red HTC One M8, according to @evleaks.

If you were to head to the Play Store right now and pick up a 16GB Nexus 7, you’d shell out $ 230. While it’s worth every penny of that asking price, you could save yourself nearly $ 100 by instead opting to grab a refurbished model from eBay. With recertified devices currently selling for $ 140 on the ‘bay, there really isn’t much of a reason not to own one at this point.

The US mobile market is weird in that almost all the phones floating around here are locked to one carrier or another. You can usually request an unlock code from the carrier if you are not under contract or still paying off the device, but Sprint is different. It claims it doesn’t have any mechanism to unlock phones for use on other US carriers right now, but that’s going to change next year.